To steal a man’s prayer is despicable. To publish it is equally despicable, but one can understand that a basically secular newspaper might give in to that temptation. But for Beliefnet to put it up is just unbelievably crass.
–Clasqm
Nothing justifies your decision to print a man’s personal prayer. This was between Barack Obama and the Lord. It should have not been printed.
–Austinkafir
It is very disheartening to see “anyones” prayers made public. However, seeing it analyzed line by line…is beyond comprehension.
–DrJake in Chicago

The folks in the comment area have overwhelmingly condemned me for reprinting and analyzing Barack Obama’s prayer at the Western Wall. There are two primary objections — that it was inappropriate to analyze someone’s prayer and that it was inappropriate to analyze this particular prayer.
I do believe it is appropriate to ask about someone’s prayer life — and for a public figure to decline to discuss it. Beliefnet members talk about their inner lives all the time, often posting public prayers or requests for prayers. When we interview public figures, we often ask about their prayer life because we think that through prayer, people express their deepest priorities, fears, aspirations and values. But we also entirely respect those who would rather not talk about it.
In this campaign, we’re trying to figure out who will become the most powerful man on earth. Understanding their prayer life, I believe, will tell us as much about them as whether they wore a flag pin, how they voted on certain bills, or even what church they go to.
Several commenters, presumably Obama supporters, criticized the portion of my blog post in which I noted that Obama’s prayers were not for world peace but for personal redemption. I actually did not mean this as either indictment or praise but rather as counterpoint to an argument made by some conservatives that Obama’s faith is entirely focused on liberal political causes – or, as James Dobson put it, “liberation theology.”
So, I have no qualms about the idea of analyzing a public figure’s prayer life.
The harder question is whether to have written about this particular prayer, which was intended to be private. I’ve read each of the comments carefully and soulsearched.
Here’s where I ended up.
First, I should be clear to anyone who misunderstood: Beliefnet was not the first to publish this prayer. An Israeli newspaper did. By the time we saw it, the prayer was making the rounds on the Internet. The text of the prayer has been printed by the Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, and many more.
I admit: the fact that it was already published had an impact on me, making it seem at first blush much more appropriate to write about it. I feel queezy about this point. It’s a beguiling and oft misused journalistic crutch that once another media outlet publishes something, it’s then “out there” and open for you to publish it — even if you wouldn’t have in the first place. We see this around sex scandals when many publications shy away from being the first to break a story but then eagerly proceed once another outlet takes the first step. I’ve always found this to be a dubious rationale and feel slightly embarrassed that I turned to it. Ethical behavior is supposed to be focused on the inherent morality of the act, not only its consequences.
Did I, by republishing the prayer along with many other media outlets, abet the initial theft of the prayer by someone at the Western Wall? Did we become like the business that sells stolen property — not involved in the initial crime but an after-the-fact accessory?
Despite the slipperiness of this other-people-did-it-first rationalization, there is a real point in its defense. Journalists should mostly be committed to dissemination of information. Unless grave harm will result, journalists should not be in the business of holding back information out of a well-meaning (or self righteous) desire to protect politicians, the government or public figures. If Beliefnet hadn’t printed the prayer, especially once it was widely circulated, we would have likely been accused of protecting Obama. Or maybe, since the prayer could help him undermine charges that he’s a secret Muslim, we could be accused of trying to hurt Obama by refusing to publicize exculpatory information. Either way, declining to print something that’s already widely available would invariably lead to charges that we had some other agenda.
I was also influenced by my assumption that Obama, on some level, knew this prayer could be made public. Nothing in his life is private now and he knows it. Does that change the morality of the newspaper publishing it and the rest of us publishing it thereafer? In a sense it does. If he expected this to become public, then reading it violates no sacred conversation.
On the other hand, I’m the editor of a website dedicated to encouraging respect for religion and people of faith. Praying at the Western Wall is a deeply personal and spiritual moment, and I can easily understand the Rabbi who says that stealing and publishing someone’s prayer is a violation of a private conversation with God. Even if every other site on the internet had already printed it, perhaps Beliefnet should have declined, just to make a point about the immorality of that student stealing the prayer.
So that’s the state of my current internal deliberations. All in all, at this moment I feel fine about analyzing prayers in general but have some mixed emotions about re-printing this one in particular.
So tell me, how does your faith tradition help you to answer these three questions:
1) Should the newspaper have published the prayer once it was given to them?
2) Once the prayer was published by the first newspaper, should other websites, including Beliefnet, have felt free to publish it too or should we have ignored it?
3) Having published it, is it appropriate to analyze its contents?
I’m starting with the assumption that it was immoral for the student to steal the prayer out of the wall (feel free to pipe up if you disagree with that).